


How To Train Your Fake Boyfriend

by hipster_queen



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, also this has a LOT of swear words, minhyuk has to pretend to be reader's boyfriend, okay so before you get too excited about these tags yall, reader has a crush on hyunwoo and oc throughout all of this, reader is bisexual and minhyuk is her coworker, so if you are uncomfortable with swear words i suggest not reading, yaaaay fake boyfriend stories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21545809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hipster_queen/pseuds/hipster_queen
Summary: With your parents visiting soon and you having made up a fake boyfriend to keep them off your back, you enlist the help of your energetic coworker Minhyuk to fill the role. Minhyuk agrees to, but he can't help himself from doing a little wingman-ing for you along the way.
Relationships: Lee Minhyuk (Monsta X)/Reader, Original Character/Reader, Son Hyunwoo | Shownu/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	How To Train Your Fake Boyfriend

**Author's Note:**

> So this story basically blossomed from my frustration at work, my absolute terror of telling my parents I'm bi, and my love for Monsta X. I cannot stress enough that this story will not end in a romantic relationship between Minhyuk and Reader - from the beginning, I set out to make this story only be Minhyuk and her as friends with him being her matchmaker as well as a fake boyfriend. Anyways, I had such a blast writing this, please enjoy! Part two will be coming soon!

“You’re no fun!” Minhyuk whines, flipping his burgundy bangs out of his eyes before he takes a sip from his water bottle and stashes it back under the checkout lane. 

You sigh and fiddle with the touch screen in front of you, pressing the item look-up button and trying to memorize the four digit codes for each produce item instead of answering Minhyuk. 

It had been about four months ago that your floor supervisor had paired him with you at your grocery story cashier job. You had gotten some… not so nice comments online from customers that you weren’t very friendly, and your supervisor had given you Minhyuk to help with that situation. She had told you “He is literally sunshine but as a human” just moments before she introduced you to him.

At first, it was slightly annoying having him as your partner. You were all about being quick yet efficient, making minimal conversation (but with your shyness, it was rather difficult. That, and your little of faith you had left for humanity had vanished about a month into this job with all the shitty customers) but he was all about making conversation with the customers. You thought that him taking his time with customers would bring your weekly cashier score down, but instead, it just skyrocketed. You were still as efficient but your customers enjoyed chatting with Minhyuk as he bagged their groceries, only acknowledging you when it was time to pay for them. You didn’t mind it though. If you could get through your shift with hardly any customer interaction, you were just fine with that.

Minhyuk calls to you and smacks the conveyor belt in-between you two to get your attention and you grimace.

“I just don’t see the point.” You finally tell him, “What’s so exciting about being in a crowded room with sweaty gross people and getting drunk?”

He rolls his eyes at you, “Not every party is like a scene from a teen movie.”

You shrug and turn away from him, trying to busy yourself with tidying up your station. You wouldn’t know – you were hardly invited to any parties when you were in high school. And the handful of times you were dragged to one, it was exactly like that from a teen movie and you just waited on the steps for your ride to take you home. 

Thankfully a customer walks up to your lane, asking if you’re open. You force a smile on your face and tell her that yes, you most certainly are. Minhyuk knows you’re only doing this so you can hope he forgets about the conversation. You’d rather stick pins in your eyes than deal with customers. 

He had been trying to get you to come to parties with him every weekend, but you had declined each one every time. And you didn’t decline them because he had romantic intentions. You two were now incredibly close in such a short amount of time, and he noticed through conversations during work how shy you were, but you never hung out together outside of work. He wanted to help you come out of your shell, but you were so damn hesitant about going to things with him.

The customer only has a few items, so her transaction ends fairly quickly, and you can feel Minhyuk’s eyes on you when she leaves. You try to ignore him, but he’s crossed his arms over his chest now and is tapping his foot, waiting for answer, and you sigh exasperatingly. 

“I just don’t want to go to a stupid party! What’s wrong with that?” You tell him.

“Nothing’s wrong with it. But if you want to work on your social skills, you’re not going to get there by not being, well, social.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious. You have led us safely to the land of Holy Shit That Is Brand New Information,” You grumble.

“Shhhhh, don’t swear. Another customer is coming.” He warns you, putting his index finger to his lips. 

You swivel your head around to see who it is, probably another crabby old lady or someone who has ten thousand coupons (sometimes it’s both), but it’s not. Instead, it’s the girl you’ve had the biggest fucking crush on since you started this job. Her long purple hair is up in a messy bun, her plaid shirt slightly askew as she comes halting to a stop and making a sudden turn into your lane. 

“Oh dude, I’m so happy you’re open!” She tries to catch her breath, reaching into her cart and then setting various fruits and vegetables down gently onto the conveyor belt, “I woke up late because I was up all night watching this horror movie marathon, and I’d just be an absolute mess at the self-checkout right now and I have, like, three seconds to get to work.” She laughs. 

You laugh with her, except your laugh sounds like a mouse’s that chokes on it’s own saliva halfway through. Because that’s what actually happened. You literally started choking on your own goddamn saliva while you were trying to laugh with her. God, you can never act normal around her for the life of you. She’s just so fucking pretty and angelic and makes your entire brain keysmash while she’s talking to you. 

You don’t know a whole lot about her. What you do know is that she is a chef at a restaurant downtown (you keep meaning to ask her which one, but you don’t want to sound creepy about it). And you know that she talks to Minhyuk more than she talks to you, but it’s always been that way. You’re sure if you could just fucking get words to come out of your mouth, she’d talk to you more too, but when will that day ever come?

Minhyuk had caught on pretty quickly about your giant ass crush on her, more enthralled in the way you tried to converse with her than the order he was supposed to be bagging her groceries. One time, her bread might have gotten smashed because he dropped two or three boxes of chicken stock in the bag on top of the bread, but in his defense, it was because she told you that your earrings were cute and you made this guffawing noise instead of saying “thank you”. 

This time though, Minhyuk is carefully bagging her groceries and trying to talk to her at the same time, so you don’t have to do any talking. He asks her if she’s experimenting with any new dishes and she starts talking about how she’s making this new lobster macaroni and cheese but an elevated version. She’s looking at both you and Minhyuk as she talks about it, and Minhyuk swears he can hear your whole heart crying about how much you love her. 

“Thank you so much, I’ll see you again next time!” She smiles cheerily at you when you finish her transaction, taking her three bags from Minhyuk’s hands and giving you a small pinky wave before she leaves. 

You stare at your touchscreen in front of you because like hell are you going to look at Minhyuk right now.

“Cute.” is all he says after she is gone. 

“Shut up,” You snap at him, feeling his thousand-watt grin on you. 

“You should have asked her what movies were in the marathon,” He goes on, completely ignoring your demand for him to cut it out.

“Dude, shut up!”

“But just picture it!” An evil smirk comes across Minhyuk’s face when you finally look over at him, “Since you get scared during horror movies, she could hold you during the scary parts and give you a little kiss on the forehead when you can open your eyes again and---”

“GO GET ME MORE BAGS FROM THE CLOSET.” You yell at him before he can continue. 

“Or you could come out of the closet...” He murmurs, and you flip him off as he giggles his way over to the closet. 

You knew he was only joking and he would never actually out you at work. 

Minhyuk was the only one at work that knew you were bisexual, and included in the incredibly small handful of people in your whole life that you had told you were bisexual. It wasn’t even like you were nervous about telling him – like, when you did tell him, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Maybe it was because Minhyuk made you feel comfortable and you trusted him (even if he did tend to talk a lot). 

You two were taking your break at the same time one day, and you were scrolling through your Facebook feed and found a meme about bi problems and you were laughing so hard that Minhyuk asked what it was. You showed him and you were like “This is one thousand percent me.” And then you got this look of horror on your face because you just realized you inadvertently told him you were bisexual. He assured you though that there was nothing to be scared of.

He had had his suspicions before you told him outright. One time his friend Hyunwoo had stopped by after a training session at the gym, sweat glistening from his forehead and making his t-shirt stick to his chest, and you were starry-eyed the whole time as Hyunwoo laughed at dumb things Minhyuk said. After he left, you turned to Minhyuk and you said, “Did you ever see a man so beautiful you wanted to cry?” 

“Everyone’s in love with him.” He had shrugged, but you held your hand up to stop him.

“No, like...I want him to impregnate me four hundred times. Full stop.” You clarified. 

Minhyuk had then proceeded to dribble the water he had just sipped all over the conveyor belt...which you made him clean up. 

He watched you closer from then on, how you talked to Chef Girl or how you borderline would start hyperventilating when some of his friends (particularly Hyunwoo and Jooheon) came through your line. You were definitely a panicky bisexual, but it was incredibly adorable. 

As Minhyuk opens up the storage closet, there are a few employees standing around at the self-checkout and they all say hello to Minhyuk. He gives them a quick nod and smile, but what one of them says makes him stop what he’s doing, bent over slightly to pick up the box, but he quickly stands up and turns around to look at them.

“What was that?” He asks, a tilt of his head and a smile on his face and hoping that he just misheard them.

“I said how is it working with The Bitch over there?” She repeats, and the other two snicker. 

Minhyuk bites his inner cheek and his smile immediately disappears. 

You’re not a bitch. Is this what your co-workers all call you? He had been working with only you a few months, but he realized your personality was not that you were mean, it’s just that you were painfully shy. He had tried to get you to open up to him, and it was tough at first, but eventually he got there. But with his bubbly personality, a bunch of the employees were drawn to him. He had noticed when co-workers had approached the two of you, they would always acknowledge Minhyuk and never you. Now he knew why. They were doing it on purpose because they were assholes. 

“One time she started yelling at me because I hadn’t sorted go-backs right, but it’s like, who fucking cares? Someone else will just pick up after me anyways.” One of them says, and Minhyuk ignores her, turning back around and getting a new box of bags. 

“I know!” The one who called you a bitch says, “Like, she takes this job way too seriously. She needs to fucking chill.” 

Minhyuk’s mouth stays silent, except with both hands holding the box, he uses his leg to slam the closet door with as much force as he can. It startles the three employees and a few customers at the self-checkout, but he doesn’t care. The less they say, the better for them before he fucking smacks them. They don’t understand you. And fuck them for calling you a bitch. 

When Minhyuk comes back over to your lane, you notice his mood has changed drastically. He hoists the box up onto the counter and tries to pick at the tape to get a good grip on it to take his frustration out on something else. Just a good ol’ rip might do it because the door only helped a little bit. 

“Why do you never talk to anyone?” Minhyuk asks. 

You shrug, handing him a box-cutter from your drawer, “Not a lot to talk about here. They all hate me anyways.”

“So you know?”

“Of course I know. I’m getting paid to do certain things here, not fuck around. They fucking mess around and don’t do their job, and then when management fires them, they’re like ‘What’d I doooo?’” You flap your arms around to mimic them, “It’s that simple. Your workplace paying you to do shit they hired you for. Why? What happened?” 

Minhyuk hands you the box flaps he has cut off and stows the box under the lane, “Nothing.”

You glance over in the direction of the self-checkout, where Minhyuk just came from, and notice that the employees all standing around there are ones that don’t do their job anyways. You know that everyone at work thinks you’re a snobby bitch, but you know you aren’t. At the end of the day, work is work, it’s not ‘get paid to talk to your friends all day’. You’re not a total monster, you’ll say hello to someone if they say hello to you first. But...this place mainly just makes you drained from the customers and makes you sad because a lot of these people have been working here for 40+ years and you’re absolutely terrified that’s going to be you. You don’t want to be stuck in old ways, you don’t want to reminisce constantly on things that happened 20 years ago. You’re still so young and have so much of your life to live and you don’t want to spend the rest of your life here.

These thoughts follow you throughout the rest of your shift and on your way home. You try to shake them but it’s just...so, so hard to. 

Your shift had left you exhausted as usual (eight hours on your feet is no fucking joke), and you trudge into your apartment, throwing your keys onto the counter as you call out to your cat. His high-pitched meows answer your call, and you smile as he trots out from your bedroom and down the hallway to greet you in the kitchen. You giggle as he hops up onto the counter and leans himself forward expectantly for head pats. 

“Hi baby. How are you doing?” You ask him, scratching him behind the ears and he trills in response. 

When he is placated, you sit down at your kitchen counter, mindlessly scrolling through your phone and trying to muster up the motivation to take another shower (there’s just something about some customers that you just...feel it so necessary to take a shower just to get their filthy, grimy sexist or racist shit off of you), when an incoming call message flashes across the top of your screen.

You groan loudly when you see that it’s your parents calling. And it’s not that you hated your parents, it’s just they were so conservative while you were the exact opposite and you could only take them in small doses now that you didn’t live with them anymore. One time there was a big blowout over politics and you and your mother went without talking for six months, and after a giant fight over the phone on Christmas day a few years ago, you and your mother laid down ground rules that you wouldn’t talk about politics anymore.

Which led to conversations about how your cat was, how the weather was, how work was going, and how your love life was going. She was absolutely incessant about your love life, telling you that at your age, you shouldn’t be single and you were such a catch and blah blah blah ‘if you just put yourself out there more’.

You usually tried to dodge that entire topic in phone calls and in person because your parents didn’t know you were bisexual. And you were terrified of how they would take it if you told them or if you let it slip. Because you just wanted to be their daughter, you didn’t want to be their “bisexual daughter”, with ‘bisexual’ said with such disdain. 

You let your phone ring a few times before you finally slide your thumb across the screen to accept the call. 

Your mother’s shrill voice immediately greets you and you hold the phone several inches away from your ear before putting it back. 

“Honey, how are you?! It’s been so long since we last spoke!”

“H-Hi Mom,” You answer, petting your cat on the head so you can focus on something else while your mother launches into three or four different stories, catching you up on everything. You don’t say much except a few ‘uh-huh’s and ‘mmhmm’s every now and then, acknowledging that you’re listening to her, while you’re actually thinking about which show you want to catch up on after your shower. 

You think you’re almost free of the conversation but then your mom has ‘one last thing to tell you’ after she’s said ‘goodbye’ to you half a dozen times already.

“Oh honey, I almost forgot to tell you. we have such a wonderful surprise for you! We are going to be in the city for a few days for one of your dad’s clients and we will get to see you!” Your mom announces, and you can see her bouncing up and down in your mind’s eye. 

Your mind goes blank as you stare at your cat. He is sitting on the counter next to you and he licks his paw and cleans behind his ear lazily, paying no mind to you. You clutch the phone, continuing to stare at him until he feels his eyes on you. He chirps at you inquisitively, thinking it’s time for food because you’re looking right at him. 

Lucky bastard. He gets to just eat and sleep all the time and doesn’t have to deal with parents making surprise visits.

“That...that sounds great, Mom!”

“And we can’t wait to meet this boyfriend of yours either! Tell you what, we will take you and him for a nice dinner and we can finally meet this nice young man we’ve heard so much about.”

Shit. Shit, you completely forgot you had made up a fake boyfriend to keep her off your ass about dating stuff. 

Your mother tells you goodbye finally and you both hang up. Swear words tumble from your lips as you take a seat on one of the stools at your kitchen counter

You stare at your phone, wondering about who you could call to take on this incredibly important role to play. You weren’t really that social, and you didn’t have very many guy friends either. The few that you had were gamers – Jungkook and Hongbin immediately came to mind. They might be able to play the role well, but then you shake your head because you didn’t know them in real life even though you all lived close to each other and planned on meeting up someday. They could both easily pass for being your fake boyfriend, but not knowing them in real life made it obviously tricky. Maybe there was someone Minhyuk knew that could…

Wait. 

Minhyuk. 

Minhyuk could do it.

You quickly pull up your contacts list, typing in Minhyuk’s name and thanking the stars that he had put his phone number in there. Minhyuk was one of those people that gave their social media to acquaintances (a dumb idea really, you thought, what if he gave his number to someone that was weird?) and you remember that first day you worked with him that he gave you his phone number at the end of your shift with each other, telling you you could call or text to him to talk about stuff. 

You hadn’t bothered to at all to do either of those things since then, only keeping interaction with Minhyuk at work. You were good at holding people at a distance like that. And it’s not that you were attracted to Minhyuk, it’s just that...every time you let people in – friends or romantic relationships – they always ended up leaving. So why even try when they were just going to leave? 

But on the other hand, Minhyuk knew some things about you. And with you two having the next few days off because of the weekend, you could be with him to quiz him on stuff he didn’t know to make this whole fake relationship look legitimate to your parents. 

Your thumb hovers over Minhyuk’s name before you tap on his contact information and start calling him. After the third ring, you tell yourself you’re being ridiculous about this and Minhyuk would never go for something like this and you should hang up, but before you can, someone answers the phone. 

“Hello?” A deep monotone voice softly greets you on the phone, and you know it’s definitely not Minhyuk. Minhyuk wouldn’t have given you a fake number, would he have!? He doesn’t seem like the type to.

“H-Hi.” You say to the stranger, “Is...is uh...is this Minhyuk’s number?”

“Yes. He’s in the bathroom right now but he told me to answer it. He---hold on, he said just now to ask who it is.”

You awkwardly tell this guy your name and that you work with Minhyuk. 

“Oh!” The stranger’s voice totally brightens up upon hearing your name, “It’s Hyunwoo!”

Of fucking course it’s Hyunwoo. God, why can’t you ever catch a break?

Your cheeks immediately redden upon remembering the last time you saw Hyunwoo. He had just come from the gym to pick up a few protein bars and his tank top was so loose and low-cut that one of his nipples appeared with every other move he made and you had tried not to stare but Minhyuk going into a coughing fit had made you realize you actually were staring. 

“It’s nothing important, really, but uh can you just...can you just tell him to call me back when he has a minute?” You say, hating that your voice is so squeaky. 

“Yeah. Of course. Oh, before you go, I keep meaning to ask you. Minhyuk said that you were looking for a gym and I just wanted to throw my name in there. I can get you a good discount too on personal training sessions with me.”

Jesus fucking fuck. You can’t even handle Hyunwoo smiling at you – how the hell are you going to handle Hyunwoo touching you all over your body and teaching you proper form for exercises? For an hour at a time!? FOR WHO KNOWS HOW LONG?

You don’t even get to reply because noises of the phone being passed clumsily fill your ear and you think for a moment Hyunwoo accidentally hung up, but Minhyuk’s voice comes on and he sounds so fucking smug that you wish you could punch his arm through the phone.

“You did that on purpose.” You accuse him, and he lets out a fake gasp.

“I’d never do such a thing!” He defends himself, putting the phone between his ear and shoulder as he makes his way into the kitchen so Hyunwoo can’t hear anything, “So what is so bad that you decided to call me? Don’t you have cooking shows to binge watch?”

“Shuddup,” You snap at him, making a mental note to watch something other than the newest episode of Hell’s Kitchen. 

“No really. I want to know what happened that you, a woman your age who should be out enjoying life, and instead likes to stay inside and cuddle with her cat and watch cooking shows and eat her weight in chips, decided to pick up the phone and call me.” He teases you. 

“You have to pretend to be my boyfriend!” You interrupt him. 

And then it all comes tumbling out.

“A while ago, my mom wouldn’t leave me alone and kept asking if I had a boyfriend, and I got so nervous that I would accidentally tell her I was bi and then we would get into a huge fight about it, so I made up this fake boyfriend and they’re coming to visit and I don’t have a boyfriend and they’re expecting me to bring him, obviously. And I can’t just make up some lie like we broke up because then she’ll get all suspicious and probably show me pictures of the sons of the women she’s friends with and try to set me up and---”

Minhyuk says your name sternly to get you to stop talking. 

He stays silent for a moment.

“I’ll do it if you come to a party.”

“No! Fuck that.”

“I’ll pay for three gym sessions with Hyunwoo as a reward.” 

You don’t even hesitate.

“Deal.”


End file.
